Private investigator John Martin says most of his life has been spent chasing bad guys and locking them up. Beyond that as a postal inspector and later a PI, he did a lot of federal background investigations. Now he is writing books about his adventures. In this interview, he answers Chronicle Editor Jerry Bellune’s nosy questions.

Q. What first attracted you to investigations?

A. After I gained employment with the Post Office, I observed postal inspectors as they occasionally visited.

My interest was piqued, but relocation would be involved, so I dropped the thought as I worked my way up through the ranks.

The inspectors would talk with me to determine my interest. Still curious, but shunning relocation, I declined the possibility.

Finally, they no longer contacted me. 10 years after I started work there I asked an inspector why they stopped recruiting me. He said I had convinced them I was not interested. I said “Okay, now I’m interested.”

In 3 months I was in 16 weeks basic training. Even then I wasn’t certain what I was getting into. I knew inspectors were responsible for security of the mail, but little did I know how far reaching and rewarding that would become.

Q. What do you consider your most emotionally rewarding case?

A. Not easy to single one out. There were bombs in the mail, theft of mail, employees being attacked, murders, boiler room scams, robberies, arson of post offices, female postmasters being forced from their offices and ravaged, ad infinitum.

If I were to choose a case it would be that of a carrier who, delivering mail from his personal vehicle at a country residence in middle Tennessee, was shot and killed on the spot by the home owner who immediately fled to Florida where we found him.

Q. What was the trickiest or most difficult one?

A. The death of a motorcycle shop owner in Kentucky. He died by mail bomb. His son was the primary suspect based on a personality conflict with his father. The son failed two polygraphs but was later killed when his motorcycle collided with a large vehicle in California while the investigation remained ongoing.

Q. Did you ever feel you had divine guidance in solving cases?

A. Routinely, although I may not have been aware of it at the time. My position took me places that most people would not go.

More often than not postal inspectors worked alone.

On one occasion when planning to arrest a dude wanted in connection with armed robbery of a mail carrier, I enlisted 2 inspectors. At the subject’s residence, when a relative opened the door, I heard someone run out the back.

I told the other inspectors to cut off his path outside. As I raced through the house to the back, the suspect was nowhere in sight. The other inspectors were leaping across fences while I stood there telling myself that this guy isn’t that fast.

Looking at the options, I saw some wooden steps leading down to a basement. That is when I heard “He’s down there.”

Weapon drawn, I eased my way down the steps. A door at the bottom of the steps led to a room. I crouched down and kicked the door open. Then I heard a noise behind me. I whirled around and my gun was pointed right at his nose as he crouched behind the steps I had just descended.

Q. What would you advise young people interested in doing what you have done?

A. Be strong, be determined, be well trained, pray and be prepared for the ride of your life. In recruitment and training, I interviewed people I knew were not a good fit.

One day my boss asked me why so many applicants were withdrawing. My only reply was that I thought we wanted the best and brightest. Besides, they didn’t want to go to New York City where this ol’ country boy started.

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A Post Office Inspector

A typical post office inspector is a man past middle age – spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, passive, and noncommittal; with eyes like a codfish, polite in contact but at the same time unresponsive; calm, and damnably composed as a concrete post or a plaster of Paris cast; a petrification with a beard of feldspar and without charm or the friendly germ; minus passion or a sense of humor. Happily, they never reproduce, and all of them finally go to Hell. - The Tombstone Epitaph -1888